The joys of the returning pen meetup
Socializing is returning to my area of the east coast. I’ve had an impromptu pen gathering and a planned pen group meetup in the span of two weeks. Huzzah.
A handful of good friends, my dungeons and dragons crew, gathered last Saturday for a barbecue. After eating, our meetup quickly transitioned into sharing pens and swabbing inks.
A week later, yesterday, my pen group held our first in-person gathering. We traveled to the Raptor Trust. The folks at the Trust generously put us up for a few hours. We even met some rescued predatory birds. Wins all around.
I spent a good part of yesterday morning settling on which kit to bring instead of writing a post. After some reflection, I settled on two sets of inks: one of inks for folks to take or trade, and a second of my current favorites for folks to sample.
Take & trade: 3 Oysters HMJE Black, J. Herbin Ambre de Birmanie, J. Herbin Larmes de Cassis, Karas Kustoms Wolf Grey, Lamy Vibrant Pink, Monteverde Gemstone Sapphire, and Platinum Blue-Black.
Sampling & merriment: Diamine November Rain, Diamine Skull & Roses, Diamine Smoke on the Water, Jacques Herbin Kyanite du Nepal, Kyo-no-oto Hisoku and Monteverde Caribbean Blue.
I also brought three empty pens alongside my currently inked: the KACO Green Edge, the TWSBI Vac700 R Iris, and my trusty Visconti Homo Sapiens.
And away we go …
Meetups are about sharing new writing experiences — with great people.
Some highlights are: I wrote with my first King of Pen. Held a handful of limited edition Sailor Pro Gears. Finally held and wrote with a full-sized Visconti Homo Sapiens. Explored a tub full of PenBBS inks. Discovered the waverly nib. And wrote with Architect grinds from three different nibsmiths. [Nerd squeal].
What do you bring to a pen get-together?
This week’s Inked Tines update includes my most recent currently inked writing tools.
Toolset
Pens. Most of my pen and ink combinations worked well this week. No single pairing stood out above the others.
KACO Green (EF) — Empty. Dry, but well-behaved pen and ink combo. Sturdy clip made for a great pocket carry. Pocket notes, reading notes, journaling.
Esterbrook J (9555) — Emptied. The 9555 was unworkable with Salamander. The nib tore pages and was generally ornery. Left this combo at home starting on Tuesday.
TWSBI 580 AL (M Predator) — 1/5. Multitasker nib brings out two extremes of Vaikhari: burnt orange and green. Excellent meeting pen. But not for virtual meetings with parents. TWSBI looks too much like a vape pen to go unremarked – so I’ve learned. Meeting notes, pocket notes, reading notes, manuscript marking.
Montblanc 146 (EF) — 1/5. Quick drying. Excellent for marking manuscripts on printer paper. Also used for meeting notes with particularly concerned parents. Le Petit Prince is comforting. Meeting notes, manuscript marking, journaling.
Platinum 3776 (F) — 1/2. Excellent performance as a task manager: dried quickly, subtle color, fun shading. And Star Wars. Daily driver. Task management, detailed reading notes, scratch notes.
Narwhal Poseidon (M) — 1/2. Disciplined M line with unique feedback. Aurora Borealis is a great “near match” in color. Worked well for meeting notes, lesson plans, and journaling.
Nakaya Neostandard (B) — 1/2. Used once at work for a student-led discussion. Otherwise, this is a great journaling combo. The B nib does limit my options for detailed notes, but not enough to stop using the Nakaya for reading (accent) notes.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Hobonichi A5 Plain Notebook. 11 more pages. The typical writing began the week. Two pages dedicated to my weekly spread, a lesson plan outline, and another page of meeting notes for a club I moderate.
These are followed by unique end-of-year thinking. I conclude my classes with a personal letter to my students. I highlight what I hope they learned, share with them what I’ve learned about myself as a teacher from working with them, and suggest next steps they can take based on what we learned this year. Three of this week’s pages house drafts of my letter.
The final four pages are class notes. I ask students to reflect on which activities and readings they would use if they taught my class next year, and which they would replace. Each section of my class got it’s own pen and ink combo to make skimming my notes easier: the TWSBI, Narwhal, and Nakaya.
Journal. Unbranded A5 Cosmo Air Light Notebook. 18 new pages, spread across seven entries. I mostly reflected on the comings and goings of my work life. Wednesday’s entry has grown into evolving plans for my
The first and seventh “entries” are scratch spreads from the barbecue last weekend and the pen meetup this weekend. Nick — a serial ballpoint user — used the KACO Retro to write phrases in Sanskrit and in Latin.
Mmm, historical linguistics
Half of my scribbling during a pen meetup is to record the pen and ink combinations I’m trying out. Often, these happenstance pairings inspire combinations I can use weeks later. And future purchases.
Written dry. One combo joined the pen gods in Valhalla this week. The KACO Retro ran empty mid-note on Friday.
I was noting a new meeting for next week: person — day time. The student is missing work for my ancient history course and I’d like to get them started filling in their extant work before grades are due next Friday. I’m a believer that a teenager shouldn’t be punished for struggling to keep up with their work right now. We’re choosing forgiveness.
The pocket notebook experiment from a few weeks ago continues. More news once I finish all three books.
Newly inked. I behaved all week — until yesterday’s pen group meetup.
I bring an empty pen or two to each meetup. It’s always fun to try new inks that friends bring to share. This week, I inked two additional pens.
The TWSBI Vac is an iridescent rainbow of colors. Popular opinion from those around the table suggested that Birmingham’s Blizzard Twinkle would highlight the Iris’ coloring beautifully.
The KACO Green Edge made a comeback, too. I quickly inked it with my new bottle of Doodlers American Eel. A stately pen and ink combo: black pen and dark grey ink. Eel’s lubrication takes much of the hardness of the F Faber-Castell nib away. Interesting pairing; worth exploring further next week.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. I ordered a Jinhao 750 this week. The black with multi-color glitter elicited an audible gasp from my partner when they saw it. So I bought it as a gift. The Jinhao arrived on Friday.
To a standing ovation
The 750 wrote well without too much tuning. November Rain was chosen for the inaugural fill-up.
I also left yesterday’s gathering with a sample of Rohrer & Klingner’s Salix and an absurdly large quantity of Noodler's American Eel. 90 ml is a lot of ink.
A lot.
Outgoing / trades or sales. My friend Mark left yesterday’s meetup with my bottles of 3 Oysters HMJE Black, Karas Kustoms Wolf Grey and Monteverde Sapphire.
The 3 Oysters was too wet for how I use black inks — task management and detailed notes need to dry quickly so as not to smear when I quickly turn pages.
Wolf Grey was fun, but didn’t have enough shading for me – at least in the pens I use for grey inks. This bottle has made its rounds within our pen group over the past few years.
Sapphire isn’t a joyful shade for me. The ink performs beautifully. Sapphire is simply not a fit for my aesthetic. I’m glad it’s on to a more appreciative home.
Currently reading and listening
Fiction. My reading lay in non-fiction for the second week in a row.
Nonfiction. Books that follow a traditional argument structure are quick reads. An introduction, three to five themes, and then a conclusion.
I bought a copy of Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason from the used bookstore in town two weeks ago. Watching An Inconvenient Truth three times with my students drew me to Gore’s book when I saw it at the shop.
I started and finished the book on Tuesday night. Gore argues that a functioning democracy is built on fair access to political discussions, good faith political debates, and mutual interest in finding compromises. TV news, his critique goes, has eroded all three pillars of the public “marketplace of ideas.” 273 pages. I’m proud of that progress.
Music. Chillhop’s summer playlist dropped this week. My good friend Justin and I have begun a tradition of listening together. We both agree: this compilation sounds like summer.
Bonus: Chillhop has a cute raccoon mascot. Who is now apparently a yuppie. That infinity pool sure is something, though.
